Multimedia System

Forum: Multimedia
Topic: Multimedia System
started by: tracyanne

Posted by tracyanne on Dec. 31 2005,00:48

I'm looking for a system I can build into a mulimedia system (music, video, TV, web radio), and I'm wondering how DSL and Mini ITX might fit that bill.

Posted by mikshaw on Dec. 31 2005,02:02

with a 533mhz processor and 256mb pc100 sdram, the mini itx available from the DSL store should be sufficient for multimedia. If you are planning to create video or work with 3D, you might have some slowdowns, but nothing too serious. If you plan to do some serious multimedia work, you might consider alternatives.

I have no idea what the capabilities of the integrated graphics are, but if possible it would be a good idea to add xfree86 and video driver that supply hardware acceleration.

Posted by tracyanne on Dec. 31 2005,23:31

I'm looking for something I can set up as an entertainment centre. From what you say it sounds promising. My only real problem might be adding a TV/FM tuner.

Posted by st0kes on Jan. 16 2006,18:10

Hey,

This is exactly what I am trying to do. I have a Via Epia ME6000 mini-itx fanless motherboard in a tiny case with 60Gb drive etc which I have just installed DSL on. All I have done so far is install DSL to disk and get my WLAN card working.

If you are embarking on a project like this you need to be careful to buy the right motherboard. The ME6000 has crappy Linux support from Via. DSL works just fine on it but I don't know how good the video playback will be as it's only 600Mhz.

Once I've got a bit further with this I'll post again and let you know how it goes.

Posted by tempestuous on Jan. 19 2006,08:36

The VIA "Unichrome" graphics chip on your Epia supports hardware MPEG2 playback, but this is complex to set up in Linux. It requires the OpenChrome driver and XvMC libraries from < http://www.openchrome.org >
and the VIA DRM module and VIA DRI drivers from < http://dri.freedesktop.org >

If you only want to use your Epia to watch TV programs then all you should need is a basic TV tuner card and perhaps the XFree86 Xserver dsl package. DSL already contains some TV tuner drivers.

But if you want to use your Epia as a Personal Video Recorder, the system requirements are more demanding. Now you need to compress the video signal to MPEG2 to record it, then decompress the MPEG2 file to replay it. With a basic TV tuner card (with no hardware processing) this is easily achieved in software on a Pentium4, but your 600MHz VIA processor might not be up to the task.

The simple (but more expensive) solution is to buy a tuner card with onboard hardware processing, like the Hauppauge PVR 250/350.
See here - < http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Analog_TV >

Posted by cmanb on Jan. 19 2006,17:34

DSL might be what you want. Be sure to check out < dyne:bolic > though. It's a media focused liveCD with emphasis on publishing content. It's worth a look.

Posted by tempestuous on Jan. 19 2006,22:58

dynebolic is focussed on audio/video production.

For media centre/home theatre setups you might be interested in -
MythTV, a bundled suite of applications. http://www.mythtv.org/
LinVDR, a small distribution. http://linvdr.org/projects/linvdr/index.en.php
epiOS, a larger distribution, Epia-friendly. < http://www.epios.net/ >